


Rome Is Lovely This Time Of Year

by EllaStorm



Category: SHAKESPEARE William - Works, Will (TV 2017)
Genre: Fake Character Death, Fix-It, Kissing, M/M, Post-Series, Reunions, and i personally will not stand for it, we all know Historical!Kit died in a really stupid bar fight, we also know TV!Kit would have died in an equally disconcerting fashion further down the line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28036881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: After Kit’s presumed death, Will receives a letter.
Relationships: Christopher Marlowe/William Shakespeare
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Rome Is Lovely This Time Of Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SandraMorningstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandraMorningstar/gifts).



> This story was – like its companion-piece “Overdrive” - created in a writing challenge I undertook with my wonderful friend @SandraMorningstar. We gave ourselves one hour each to write ANYTHING we wanted. This time around I chose Will/Kit Fix-It-Fic, because I felt like the world needed more of those. 
> 
> Apart from some minor corrections of terrible mistakes in grammar and orthography that originally occurred due to the time restraint, this ficlet remains unchanged from the result of the aforementioned challenge.

“Here,” the man said and handed Will a folded piece of paper. A sway of functional, hand-written letters spelled _William_ over the broken seal.

For a moment Will felt a hot spike of anger in his stomach, at the audacity of breaking the seal, of robbing Kit of even this one last shred of privacy, but his rationality told him that it was probably better not to insult an agent of the Crown directly. And that, even if the letter had been opened, at least they had brought it to him and not burned it directly.

“Thank you, Sir.” The man gave a brisk nod, then turned and vanished back into the night whence he’d come from.

With a sigh, Will closed the stage door of the Globe theatre and walked back through the chaos of unfinished costumes and props to the small table next to the stairwell where he had set himself up for the night.

It was exactly two weeks today. Two weeks, and with each passing day Will felt less like a man and more like a book press with moving, functioning parts, churning out lines without meaning, like all the truth inside his ideas had dried up, vanished _._ Yet writing seemed to be the only thing that kept him somewhat sane.

He wondered what would happen if he stopped.

The candle on his table was already burning low when Will sat down, the letter in his hands, _Kit’s_ letter, the last of its kind. He considered, for a moment, whether he should open it at all, or better burn it, throw it in the Thames.

But it said _William_ – Will could almost hear his name, hear _him_ say it with disinterest or demand or passion – and his hand opened the broken seal and unfolded the letter.

It was a sonnet.

One of his own sonnets. Familiar words written in Kit’s hand.

_Let me not to the marriage of true minds…_

Will closed his eyes and shook his head. He knew how the sonnet went, how every word had been unearthed from deep within him, Kit’s face in his hands, Kit’s eyes in his eyes, nothing but breath between them.

_Love’s not Time’s fool._

_Love’s not-_

_I can’t do this, Kit. I can’t._

He had looked away one moment too long, had with the sinking of his hand dipped the corner of the paper into the flame of the candle on the table, where it blackened, bent, then reddened, until he finally managed to pull it away and put the smoulder out with the sleeve of his jacket.

Smoothing the paper out again, he found something odd.

Next to the black, burnt corner a brown line had appeared behind the ink letters. Had the heat…?

Will quickly held the paper to the flame again, not close enough to burn it, this time, but close enough to warm it – and yes! Letters appeared between and behind the other letters, the same handwriting, _Kit’s_ handwriting.

_Every Catholic, they say, should journey here at least once in their lifetime. 1 st July 1593._

A date. Set in the future. Beneath it, a drawing, not quite accurate but accurate enough, and Will felt like he was coming out of his skin with relief.

The cupola of the famed new church the Pope had built himself in the Vatican was breath-taking, taller and bigger than most of the things Will had seen in his life, sublime even in the pressing heat and stink of the Roman summer. His gazing up at the Cathedral was almost an act of blasphemy, however, because he didn’t even give it half of his attention. All of his mind, this entire journey, had only been set on one thing, one man, one flimsy hope.

And it was madness, surely it was.

Kit was dead.

But then…that message, so clearly meant for him.

Maybe-

Will jerked when a small hand tugged at his tunic and looked down. Next to him stood a tiny, black-haired girl with big brown eyes in a dirt-ridden white dress.

“ _Terme di Caracalla,_ ” she said. “ _Terme di Caracalla, mezzanotte.”_

“What-?” Will demanded, but the girl had already turned, slipped out of the grip of his hand and been swallowed by the crowd.

It was still warm at midnight, the dry grass in the outskirts of Rome a bristling presence beneath Will’s feet, the sound of crickets and the heavy scent of flowers a warm cocoon that surrounded him from all sides. Before him lay the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, a forever-present memory of the past, like everything in Rome. They were derelict, unlived-in, consisting of monstrously thick walls and arches that nobody could find a use for. So, they simply stood here, beside the city, destined for dust and ashes.

_A good place to meet a ghost._

Will’s feet hit stony ground and his lantern showed him the dancing remnants of mosaics at his feet, a-thousand-and-five-hundred-year-old patterns and animals in black and white. He walked over them, marvelling at how much of them was still here – and then a voice took him out of it, from around the corner of a ruined wall.

“Isn’t it lovely this time of year?”

Will’s lamp fell and shattered on the ground, the light extinguished, and he was alone and lost in the dark – until a hand curled around his arm, warm, unerring, indelible.

“It’s you,” he heard himself say, and then he was pulled into a body he would have recognised anywhere, its planes and edges and sharpness so familiar that even madness wouldn’t have been able to recreate it in such detail.

“William, _William,_ ” Kit said against his ear. “You found it. You found me.”

“By chance,” Will said, tears in his eyes and in his voice, and then he was kissed, clumsily at first due to the lack of sight, but deeper, smoother later, as they fell back into their old rhythm, Will’s hands in Kit’s hair, Kit’s teeth at his lip.

They parted for a moment to breathe and Will could feel Kit’s quiet laughter against his mouth as Kit’s hands grabbed at his face.

“By chance or fate or _God,_ for all I care, William. You found me.”

“I did. I have,” Will said, still unbelieving, still not quite in his right mind. “Oh God, Kit. I really have.”

Kit smiled into his mouth, kissed him again between the derelict ruins, and there was exhilaration in the kiss, and joy, and the lightheartedness of freedom.


End file.
